Tag: magazines

As I stated in my previous post, I’m currently volunteering with the charity Crimestoppers, which is the UK’s only independent crime fighting charity and this year they are marking 25 years of fighting crime.

Working on an ad-hoc basis, I write media appeals to raise awareness of crime in the Peterborough (Cambridgeshire) area. Alongside this, a group of us are working on the Cycle Theft Campaign, in which we are trying to prevent cycles from being stolen.

There are two aspects to the campaign:

1) The prevention of cycle theft – what you can do to prevent cycle,

2) Encouraging the reporting of cycle theft: How to encourage people to report cycle theft.

The main message that needs to be put across is anonymity – that people can give information to Crimestoppers on cycle theft anonymously, and that there are two ways they can do this, one via the Crimestoppers website and two, ringing there 0800 number. People can also claim rewards, up to £1,000 if the information given leads to one or more people being arrested and charged.

So we had a meeting on July 5 and as the campaign is still in its planning stages, this will be a short update – don’t want you guys getting bored.

Overview:

Bicycle theft is seen as a common problem internationally. Generally it refers to the theft of the entire bike however, this can include component parts and accessories being stolen. Statistics in 2012, have shown that the cycle thefts in Peterborough peak between the months of July – Oct, where people are out and about. Research shows that offenders tend to target cycles in public settings; particularly schools, university campuses and transport hubs as they have a regular supply of unguarded bicycles.

My role:

My role in mainly dealing with the PR/media side of it such as writing press releases, news articles and features for the local newspaper and magazines. I can’t wait to get started!

Anyway I’ll update again on this as the campaign moves into its next phase, however at the moment it’s just getting in contact with the right people who can help get the message across.

Heidi Semple’s job demands that she spent a lot of her time on the phone or on her laptop typing away.

The 45-year-old Market Deeping resident is the Managing Director of Scene Marketing Ltd and founder of Scene Publications. She launched the Scene magazines in 2007 with just one Deeping-based magazine. Today she has added five successful titles to the Scene portfolio.

Heidi has accomplished quite a lot in a short amount of time. So for her, running a magazine is not difficult.

Her first job was working as a Pharmacist Assistant. She does not have a degree just the usual O-Levels.

Once she began her career in publishing, she became hooked,

“It just got into my blood really, because once you understand it; it is such a fast pace,” said Heidi. “Every day is different, you never know what you are going to be working on. It is being proactive, imaginative and I quite enjoy that.”

At Emap, she started at the bottom as a telesales person and came through the ranks. Over the years, she relished the changes. Heidi spoke about how frustrating it became working for a big company.

“It took ages for a decision to be made. We had a meeting about a meeting, back-to-back all day,” she said.

However with Emap being taken over by Bauer Media, she began looking at other options and working for herself sounded like a better idea.

She initially got the idea whilst working with a colleague who also embarked on doing something similar elsewhere.

“It was meeting and talking to people that I realised there was a huge need for community information,” she said. “Nobody knew what was going on in their community and I was able to deliver that kind of news with the Scene.”

So that is how the Scene magazine was born.

“Now I work harder than I did before that it doesn’t feel like work.”

Kimberley Evans, fellow colleague and Advertising Executive at Scene Publications agrees, “Heidi knows her stuff, she is very proactive and a very likeable person.”

With multi-media journalism coming in, Heidi said it hasn’t had much impact on the magazines they do.
“We have multi-media, we can view our magazines online, they are interactive and we have to go more and more down that route,” She said.

Her training from Emap comes into good use at Scene when dealing, managing people and deadlines.

Heidi said, “Emap were very good with their training and I took every opportunity I got. So in that sense I know how to deal with people and hopefully know how to get the best out of them.”

Heidi has a wide range of skills but would like to add more to her repertoire. She wants to experiment with having a magazine that would be placed on a newsstand and which is a paid for publication.

“I have worked on national magazines but only one element of it. So as much as I had editorial, marketing and even subscription experience to a degree, actual paid-for distribution I don’t have experience of,” she said.

Any advice?

“You got to be so imaginative and you have to be more creative as it is more accessible now.”